Versatile machines have been developed, which dispense roofing washers individually onto a roofing membrane or onto a sheet of roofing insulation, and which drive threaded fasteners through the roofing washers, into a substrate, such as, for example, a metal or wooden deck. A particularly useful example of such a machine is disclosed in a copending patent application, Ser. No. 07/432,006, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,684, for IMPROVEMENTS IN ROOFING WASHER DISPENSING MACHINE, which was filed Nov. 6, 1989, and which is assigned commonly herewith. The machine disclosed in the copending application comprises a magazine, which is loaded with a stack of roofing washers, and which enables such washers to be individually dispensed from the magazine by means of mechanisms disclosed within the copending application.
Often, after a prior stack has been exhausted, it is necessary for a worker standing upon a roof to reload the magazine with a new stack of roofing washes. If such washers must be individually loaded into the magazine, it is painstaking for the worker to do so, since the worker must be very careful to orient each washer properly before loading such washer into the magazine. Improperly oriented washers cannot be properly dispensed by means of the machine and can jam the machine.
A need has been created, to which this invention is addressed, for a simple, inexpensive way to collate a counted or predetermined number of similar roofing washers, whereby they can be easily loaded into the magazine of such a tool.